In this final, Part 7 of the series on the Crescent and the Cross, Jill Kamil carries the reader through to new beginnings The aim of Napoleon Bonaparte's highly organised military campaign in Egypt in 1798 was to establish a sphere of French cultural and commercial influence in the Middle East, and to control the land and sea route between Europe and India. His dream of an empire was dashed, however, by the Battle of the Nile on 1 August that year, when the British fleet under Lord Nelson arrived off the Egyptian coast and sank the French fleet which was lying at anchor in Abu Qeer Bay. In 1801, a combined British, Ottoman and Mameluk attack forced Napoleon to retreat. The French occupation of Egypt had been short-lived, but it marked a turning point in the history of the nation. The best-known of France's legacies was the Institut d'Egypte, the headquarters of Napoleon's commission of sciences in Cairo. It had departments to study the country's raw material potential, water supply and mineral resources, and is particularly remembered for its archaeological research and the eventual publication of Description de l'Egypte, the first comprehensive scientific survey of the country's ancient monuments. Following the evacuation of the French and the temporary closure of the Institut, many French researchers remained in Egypt. They and the new British administrators struggled for power for nearly two years, until at last the political vacuum was filled by the commander of the Albanian contingent of the Ottoman force originally despatched to fight against the French. This young officer had been born in Macedonia to Albanian parents, and his name was Mohamed Ali. The achievements of Mohamed Ali in creating a modern society were outlined in Part IV in this series. The final transformation of Cairo into a modern city, however, can be attributed to his grandson, the French- educated Khedive Ismail, who is largely remembered for the grand celebration to mark the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Imbued with much of the vitality of Mohamed Ali, Ismail was so impressed with Paris when he visited the Exposition Universelle in 1867 that he determined to transform Egypt's capital into just such an elegant city. He built in record time and mostly on borrowed money a city with wide, straight thoroughfares, adorned in extravagant Baroque-style palaces. The southern boundary lay roughly at the Mameluk aqueduct which extends from the river south of Cairo to the Citadel, and the city was divided into two sections by the Mohamed Ali Boulevard, a two-and-a- half-kilometre thoroughfare that ran diagonally from Ezbekieh (with cafeterias, apartment stores, theatres and an Opera House styled after the one in Paris), to the Citadel. Aiding Ismail in these undertakings was Ali Mubarak, an Egyptian cabinet minister and engineer, a dynamic individual who had been sent to France under Mohamed Ali. As minister of works he elaborated a state school system, assisted in founding a teacher's training college, the Egyptian national library, and supervised public works projects. In the frenzied rush to modernise Cairo on European lines, serious concern was voiced about the nation's Islamic heritage. In 1881 Khedive Tawfiq founded the Museum of Arab Art (now the Islamic Museum) and the Comité de conservation des monuments de l'art Arabe (simply the Committee) was also founded. Its members included government officials, the Antiquities Service (still under French control), private organisations and individuals, to discuss which Islamic monuments constituted the national heritage. They launched into a heated debate. When, for example, the façades of some buildings were restored in what Mubarak labelled "neo-Islamic" style, he strongly criticised steps taken to "Europeanise" architecture. A philosophy of preservation was eventually formulated. It was decided that such portions of historic buildings that were in the most urgent need of repair would be stabilised, and that every effort would be made to maintain their character. In view of the increasing number of foreign visitors anxious to "capture the spirit of the Arabian Nights", however, attention should be given to "grand vistas" which would enable the monuments to be visited and photographed to advantage. In keeping with this philosophy the Graeco- Roman Museum in Alexandria was inaugurated in 1892, followed by the new Egyptian Museum of Pharaonic Antiquities in Tahrir Square in Cairo in 1902. The committee's emphasis on historical buildings such as mosques and mausolea, to the exclusion of houses, shops, ateliers and smaller structures, resulted in many monuments being stripped of the living fabric into which they were woven. While representative examples of Tulunid, Fatimid, Ayoubid, Mameluk and Ottoman styles were chosen to be "monumentalised" as antiquities, no attention was given to Christian churches -- neither those constructed in the "Islamic" sector of the city nor in Old Cairo. Alfred Butler, a British scholar and the private tutor to Prince Tawfik, was the first person to observe the wilful destruction of Christian churches in the capital. He noted that even when spared total devastation they were surrounded by "unsightly cubes" of modern buildings. His two-volume Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt, published in 1884, was a comprehensive and unprejudiced study of old churches throughout the country, and it was thanks largely to his encouragement that some of the mediaeval Coptic monuments in Old Cairo were eventually identified by the committee for conservation. Butler provided a stimulus for others to continue detailed studies. One of these was Morcus Simaika, whose elder brother had assisted Butler in his research. With his deep interest in Pharaonic, Islamic and Coptic antiquities, Simaika was also disturbed by the committee's enthusiasm to preserve "Arab" art to the exclusion of the country's Christian heritage, especially in view of the fact that when the Arabs arrived in Egypt in the seventh century, they found a living culture already mapped out and made use of what was there. They allowed the Qibt (i.e. Egyptians) to continue to run the government for them, and depended on them for food, raw materials and craft specialisations including architecture, sculpture, painting and handicrafts. It was only when planned immigration was encouraged in the eighth and ninth centuries, when large numbers of Arab tribesmen from north-eastern Arabia settled in Egyptian towns and the countryside, that the demographic balance shifted. At first the Arab settlers had privileged status: they did not pay the taxes that were levied on non-Muslims, and there were several uprisings. However, as they intermarried with Egyptians, they were gradually absorbed into the age-old way of the life in the Nile Valley, and distinctions between Egyptianised Arabs and Arabised Egyptians slowly ceased to be significant. Arabs bearing such names as Ali and Mohamed wrote in Coptic, and evidence that the conquerors learnt the language of the subjugated is evident from letters from Muslim officials to their Christian subjects written in Coptic (which was derived from the Ancient Egyptian language and written in a script similar to Greek). Simaika saw no great divide between the religion of ancient Egypt and many aspects of Christianity, and he also held that most Egyptian Muslims were descended from Copts. He finally kindled enough enthusiasm for Coptic art and architecture to be regarded as a significant aspect of the national past to justify a Coptic Museum. His first task was to find suitable land, and in 1908 he successfully laid claim to a smallholding belonging to the patriarchate within the walls of the Roman/Byzantine fortress. He raised funds by public subscription and used his personal influence to acquire artefacts and architectural elements from old Coptic houses. It was understood from the beginning that carved stone capitals and other objects collected from churches and old houses should form the nucleus of the museum, and Simaika also collected miscellaneous objects from abandoned burial grounds, derelict monasteries and ancient temple sites that had been partially converted into chapels or churches. The wide array of objects he assembled understandably revealed different ethnic influences -- classical, Egyptian and Greek- Egyptian, as well as Persian pagan and Syrian Christian influences. This presented Simaika with a dilemma -- how to put them into some semblance of order. He opted for the easy way out. He grouped the objects into media: stonework, metalwork, woodwork, manuscripts, glassware, tapestries and pottery. There were necessarily many "miscellaneous objects" from unknown provenance. The trend towards placing Egypt's heritage into compartments was and remains unfortunate because, while the Pharaonic, Graeco-Roman, and Islamic periods justify separate museums (because of differences in the languages, writing systems, and religious ideas of different eras), there is no such thing as a "Coptic period", and there is little wonder that generations of Western historians have had trouble in identifying Coptic art and architecture. All attempts at classification are flawed because items are studied out of context. Through the rough groupings into four distinct phases: the so-called "pre-Coptic period" from the first to the third centuries BC; the period vaguely described as "proto-Coptic" (the late third to fifth centuries); the "Coptic Period" (the fifth to seventh centuries); and the "Final Coptic" period (from the eighth to the 12th centuries), the impression is given of a rise and fall in Coptic culture in the Roman period; its maturity under Byzantium; and its fall after the Arab invasion. This is a totally false concept, because there were Christian monasteries and churches all over the country when the Arabs arrived in Egypt -- and moreover the Coptic Orthodox Church remains a living culture today. As outlined in this series of articles, the Arab occupation of Egypt and the spread of Islamic ideals resulted into the slow and steady emergence of an Arab-Coptic culture. For example, in accordance with Islam, which forbids the portrayal of any living likeness, there developed among craftsmen in local workshops, and for Muslim and Christian patrons alike, an increasing production of abstract ornamentation. One only has to compare the objects in the Islamic Museum with the architectural elements in the Old Wing of the Coptic Museum (which were salvaged from old Coptic houses and incorporated into its structure) to recognise a single identity: Fine wooden ceilings, mashrabiya (decorative woodwork) windows, arches and tiles in geometric and non-figurative designs all point to a shared pattern of life, and (as outlined in Part V of this series) a national identity. Egypt's Islamic and Coptic culture may have been compartmentalised, but its uniqueness and a sense of citizenship among Egyptians remains strong. The history of Egypt is one grand and continuous narrative of a rich and strategically important country with an enormous capacity to tolerate and absorb different cultures. Historians -- whether they call themselves Egyptologists or specialists in Graeco-Roman, Coptic, Byzantine or Arab culture -- have created their own narratives from available material, and have selected, from the infinite ocean of facts, those that suit their purpose and which fit into a rational explanation and interpretation. I hope that this series of articles on the Crescent and the Cross (an encapsulated history of 14 centuries of Muslim/Coptic relations) will have succeeded in providing a thoughtful background to a deeper understanding of post-Mubarak Egypt, in which there is a need to demonstrate cohesion rather than division, as when pro-democracy demonstrators in Tahrir Square hoisted high the symbols of their respective faiths -- the Holy Bible and the sacred Quran. The author's book Christianity in the Land of the Pharaohs was published by Routledge in the UK and USA in 2002.
